Mentor, Lake County address flooding

The city of Mentor and Lake County are working together to help address flooding concerns especially after the July 20 storm that hit Northeast Ohio and caused many basements and properties to flood.
Lake County provides sanitary sewer service for the city, and officials want to look at the big picture to see what is causing backups and flooding into homes after rain events.
County and city officials would like to put together a joint proposal to hire an engineer or engineering firm that would be able to have a knowledge of both sanitary and stormwater systems.
Mentor City Manager Ken Filipiak said officials are targeting for the second half of October to put together a formal request for qualifications.
“We’re looking for an engineering firm that has expertise in dealing with both sanitary and storm sewers and has knowledge of how they interact,” Filipiak said.
The city and county have known there is infiltration involving both types of systems.
Filipiak said the city continues to want to aggressively take a look at anything to help with sanitary sewer backups in the community.
“The city and county have been doing a lot of stuff cooperatively and among those things is we want to jointly fund an engineering review of both systems in that area to see if there is some opportunity down the road with an eye toward identifying the most cost-effective capital improvements and to see if there is an interaction between the two systems that could account for some of the sanitary problems we know that exist,” he said.
He said the highest risk areas in the city are north of Bellflower Road between Route 306 and the Bellflower curves and those served by the sanitary sewer off Route 306 that runs north and south and the neighborhoods east and west off that, which is mostly Ward 3 and some of Ward 2.
“We’re obviously making improvements already in that area and continue to do so; our Bellflower project is a large one,” Filipiak said. “We’re also going to be doing a lot more sampling evaluation of residential houses in these areas. One of the things we were careful to write into the city’s grant program is to require residents who accept grant funding to help with their sanitary backups is to allow their homes to be tested through dye testing or smoke testing and to allow their sanitary lines to be inspected when the county has capacity to do that.”
Lake County Commissioner Daniel P. Troy said the feeling of the county is that there also is a substantial problem with stormwater in those area because they are low-lying.
“It was a big swamp area, and now it’s residentially developed,” Troy said.
He said many people also think they get water in their basement because of something wrong with the infrastructure, but flooding in homes could also occur because of changes in the water table and topography.
The commissioner said those differences of opinion regarding what is causing problems in that area is one of the issues to be addressed on a joint basis.
“Rather than you say this and we say that, can’t we jointly agree to have a third party tell us what we need to do?” Troy said. “I think probably soon we’ll have the qualifications and what the request for qualifications is going to say. I’d like to do it jointly to have the city of Mentor and us be able to say here are the problems and here are the steps we need to take.”
Filipiak said the city is pleased to work with the county on the proposal.
“Information is critical on really targeting capital improvements,” he said. “The city has already spent more money investing in our stormwater system. All of those things are helping, but as we move forward it’s important to know where to focus our capital projects for the future and we think this will help.”
The commissioner said he believes it’s a question of whether the flooding problems from storms can be cured or whether the plan moving forward should to focus on minimizing damage from storms.
Both local governments may need to interact more to make suggestions as well about how to work with residents to fix problems that occur on private property and contribute to the problems.
“The law gives some limited license to do investigations on private property,” Troy said.
Many storm and sanitary sewer systems within the county are very old and in dire need of repair or replacement, and of course, that takes money, officials said.
“I think that’s why you need to have these independent studies to tell you what you need to do to fix it,” Troy said. “Maybe not tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to hear.”
He said the key point for now is to determine how much of the infrastructure — with a modern amount of spending — would keep things functioning and make sure water is treated properly before flowing into Lake Erie.

About the Author

John is a veteran multimedia journalist who covers government and politics in Lake County. He loves running and Cleveland sports. Reach the author at jhutchison@news-herald.com
or follow John Arthur on Twitter: @newsheraldjah.